Her appearance at this time was miserable and little less than disgusting. Her skin was thick and yellow; her eyes were bloodshot and watery; her nose was reddened with frequent crying; her form was of an almost skeleton thinness; her manner was full of strange starts and gaspings. It was curious to note the contrast between her perfect wretchedness of aspect and the unfeeling coolness with which the Squire watched and studied her. In this woful way was the Lauson family getting on when the country around was electrified by an event which almost threw the murder itself into the shade. Henry Foster, the accepted lover of Bessie Barron, a professor in the Scientific College of Hampstead, was suddenly arrested as the assassin of Miss Mercy Lauson. “What does this mean!” was his perfectly natural exclamation, when seized by the officers of justice; but it was uttered with a sudden pallor which awakened in the bystanders a strong suspicion of his guilt. No definite answer was made to his question until he was closeted with the lawyer whom he immediately retained in his defence. “I should like to get at the whole of your case, Mr. Foster,” said the legal gentleman. “I must beg you, for your own sake, to be entirely frank with me.” “I assure you that I know nothing about the murder,” was the firm reply. “I don’t so much as understand why I should be suspected of the horrible business.” The lawyer, Mr. Adams Patterson, after studying Foster in a furtive way, as if doubtful whether there had been perfect honesty in his assertion of innocence, went on to state what he supposed would be the case of the prosecution. “The evidence against you,” he said, “so far at least as I can now discover, will all be circumstantial. They will endeavor to prove your presence at the scene of the tragedy by your tracks. Footmarks, said to correspond to yours, were found passing the door of the arbor, returning to it and going away from it.” “Ah!” exclaimed Foster. “I remember,—I did pass there. I will tell you how. It was in the afternoon. I was in the house during a thunder-storm which happened that day, and left it shortly after the shower ended. I went out through the garden because that was the nearest way to the rivulet at the bottom of the hill, and I wished to make some examinations into the structure of the water-bed. A part of the garden walk is gravelled, and on that I suppose my tracks did not show. But near the arbor the gravel ceases, and there I remember stepping into the damp mould. I did pass the arbor, and I did return to it. I returned to it because it had been a heavenly place to me. It was there that I proposed to Miss Barron, and that she accepted me. The moment that I had passed it I reproached myself for doing so. I went back, looked at the little spot for a moment, and left a kiss on the table. It was on that table that her hand had rested when I first dared to take it in mine.”